A Whit of Everything

I have moulded myself

From all the wellsprings irredeemably lost

Long before I was born.

I can provide a long list

Of thoughts which, gushing from the subterranean world,

Have thrust themselves into every pore of my soul

Like the lances into a panoply.

From some works in the dead language

Of the first poet driven into exile to our country,

From the letters announcing the fieriest invasion,

From the lives of the saints who hesitated

To come all the way to our times.

And then from the hands which transcribed them

And have been forgotten,

From the eyes which once read them

And have been forgotten,

From the echoes they once stirred

And have been forgotten.

A whit of everything,

A whit of your life,

A whit of my death,

So that nobody could track them down.

Oh, happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who draws his inspiration from my work,

After all these words

Which are being sublimated by my soul

Have returned back home

Into the primordial oblivion!

English version by Gabriela PACHIA